Breathless
by sdbubbles
Summary: Under extreme pressure, even Henrik Hanssen will succumb to breathlessness in the end.


**A/N: In a bizarre way, writing this might have saved my life tonight. My mind is pretty mushed up, and it's 3am, so it might not make a whole lot of sense.**

**Sarah x**

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Hanssen looked at the clock. Another hour. Another hour of sheer...he didn't even know how to explain it.

His chest felt tight.

His heart felt cold.

His hands shook.

He wanted to shout.

He wanted to scream.

He wanted to cry.

His self-discipline didn't allow it. His greatest strength had become his most crippling weakness. But it had to slip. Through everything – Maja, Fredrik, every insane scenario he had ever run into in this mad, bizarre hospital – he remained deadly calm. He couldn't do it anymore.

He stood up and started to pace the room in a dead straight line; he could almost hear Maja scolding him for it, joking he was going to wear the carpet out. And just as he had done as a younger man, he ignored her and kept pacing, hoping the methodical steps would release his mind. He hated to be stuck in a corner. He couldn't step back any further. Taking steps was easy. Standing still was hard.

So he kept pacing. Kept moving. Kept trying to find some sense in the madness.

He found nothing.

All he found was the same old anger and the familiar searing iciness of knowing he was never good enough. He was too cold. Too heartless. Too broken.

He stared at the coffee table, the wood as dark as his own heart. Why had he chosen a colour darkness for everything in this office, but left the walls pale? Did it represent him? A black heart with a fear of being trapped. That's all he was. He was no use to anyone. He was barely human.

He turned his back on it only to find the black filing cabinet; cold dark metal met his eyes, and it reminded him for a moment of the black water he had grown up on the shores of. The blackness his mother had used to take her own life. The darkness that surrounded his father as he lay dying. The absence of light that now consumed him as it had done his parents.

His mind slipped gears, like the clutch was faulty and he had no control. It slipped from reverse into fifth gear, speeding ahead into the wall of his own self-defence in front of him. The loss of discipline pulled his temper to the surface. It forced his fist back. It forced his fist to slam hard into the metal in front of him.

Shocked at his own actions, he stared at his hand; the skin was painful and torn across the knuckles from where the metal had turned jagged at his touch. He stared at the redness weeping onto his pale skin, the pain releasing a poison of furious anguish into the air surrounding him. It rose like a wave before it crashed over him. He could barely breathe.

He turned and punched the wall, feeling the plaster crumble against his skin. To see his own blood smeared against the dented, shattered wall was almost satisfying. The blood pouring from the innumerable cuts was like poison flowing from his veins, the toxic fluid released from his heart. The pain seared straight to the bone.

He kicked the coffee table over in one swift action, watching as it slammed into the wall above the sofa. The bridge of his foot was bruised by the edge of the hard wood, his temper finally winning out against his self-control. He knocked the bonsai tree to the floor. He kicked the desk. He threw random books from the case to floor, revelling in the noise he was making. His kick left a cracked dent in the wooden door. He was absorbed in the destruction he was causing. He was satisfied with the physical punishment he was inflicting on himself.

But he couldn't breathe. His chest constricted and forcing the air to stay in his lungs until breathing felt like an impossible task. He knew now that he had finally gone mad.

He spun around as he heard the door open.

"I have that re-" he heard Serena Campbell begin, but a look of ill-disguised horror fell upon her face as she looked around, taking in the damage he had imposed on his office. She shut the door and dumped her paperwork on his desk, beginning to pick up the books he had thrown to the cold hard floor. "What on Earth..." she trailed away, her dark eyes darting around the room to everything he had taken his anger out on.

He opened his mouth but there was no way he was capable of speaking. Instead he choked, and Serena immediately took his hand and led him to the sofa, knocking the table carelessly on the floor to make a space for them.

"Panic attack?" she asked him gently. He only shrugged his shoulders. He didn't know what this was but it was crushing him. "OK," she said. "OK. Stop trying to breathe in, Henrik." He looked at her in fright at what she was asking him to do. "Trust me." But trusting the woman before him was no easy feat. "Trust me."

He met her eyes and their sincerity forced him to obey her order. He stopped trying to inhale air and his body was compelled to exhale, getting rid of some of the excess oxygen. "Breathe in," she commanded him. He obeyed. "Breathe out." He was acutely aware of her hand on his back, moving up and down as he leaned forward, but he was still too breathless to order her away. "Breathe in and hold it." Trusting her, he breathed in and refused to exhale until she told him, "Right, breathe out. Try and breathe normally."

He nodded, and he could feel his chest loosening under her reassuring command. Her arms was soon around his shoulders as he watched her become protective of him, her maternal side shining through even though he was older than her and normally one of probably only four people on the planet that caused her life to be difficult. And yet it was only because of her that he could now breathe.

When he could speak, embarrassment at his own flaws overcame him and he felt the need to apologise to Serena. "Sorry," he muttered, staring at the carpet so he didn't have to meet her gaze.

"Don't be. I know how scary it is." He looked around and saw her reassuring smile, despite the confession that she too had once suffered the paralysing anxiety attack he had just been dragged from. "What's done this to Mr. Imperturbable then?" He just shook his head, unable to tell her the extent of how he was feeling. She lifted his raw, bloodied and swollen hand and felt it. "That's going to need a clean up and an X-ray."

He didn't argue; medically he knew she was right. The cuts needed cleaned and the bones needed checked for fractures, though he was fairly sure he was not strong enough to break his own hand. She stood up and headed for the door but he noticed she did not lift her belongings. "Where are you going?" he asked her hoarsely.

"To get you some sweet tea, some chocolate and a bandage. I won't be long," she replied. Her slight smile was comforting though he still found trusting her difficult as she walked out the door, but he did trust that she was coming back. Her human side would not leave him needing medical attention when she knew full well he would not willing ask. He had stitched himself up once before, but on that occasion his right hand had been fully functional. Now he could barely even move his fingers.

He looked around his office and the chaos he had caused. There were holes in both the wall and the door. There were books strewn hopelessly across the floor. The coffee table where Serena had discarded it in her haste to sit him down. She was being kinder and more human than he could have asked of her. He was a grown man; to look after him was not her job or her concern, but she was doing it anyway because she was a kind woman, despite what she pretended to be.

He startled slightly when she returned and closed the door quietly behind her. She handed him, as she had promised, a mug of tea and a bar of chocolate before she sat down next to him. She gingerly took his hand into hers. "This might sting," she warned him. He nodded curtly but he still winced as the antiseptic fell into the broken skin. "Sorry," she smiled.

"It's fine."

"Want me to kiss it better?" she drawled, and he smirked slightly at her wide grin as she went whistling through the dark, making light of it. "It's nothing to be ashamed of, Henrik. It's not a sign of weakness." He just sipped his tea silently, almost choking on the amount of sugar she had put in it as he allowed her to talk. "It's a sign of someone who has been far too strong for all their life."

She started to bandage up his hand. "That's never happened before," he admitted carefully. "I don't know what came over me."

She remained silent as she finished tending to his hand. She gave him two painkillers which he willingly took when he felt the pain intensify. He opened the bar of chocolate and gave her half. He walked over and took his spare mug from his drawer, pouring half the tea into it and giving her that too. "That was sweet," she allowed. "Not necessarily sanitary," she added with a smirk.

"Funny," he retorted sarcastically. He sat back down beside her.

"I know. One of my many talents," she smiled. "I should do stand up!" she exclaimed. He could not disguise the look of mild horror on his face at the thought of Serena Campbell going into stand up comedy. She would be sure to offend half the audience. She laughed quietly to herself, but the air remained heavy around them as she helped him dance around the mess he was making. "Do you want to talk about it?" she offered him doubtfully.

"Not particularly," he replied.

"It's OK. It's not easy."

"Do you want to talk about it?" he offered her.

She smiled to herself with a strange look in her eyes. "When I was younger I used to have these horrible panic attacks. Literally every time I argued with my parents or screwed something up or found something too difficult, my chest would get tight and I would think I was going insane. It landed me in hospital when I was fifteen but they couldn't see past the physical to the psychological." He remained silent and waited for her to continue. "In the end it was Edward who levelled me out and showed me how to stop it happening."

She drank from her cup and looked around at him. "This is not going to happen again," he assured her.

"Yes, it is. It happens all the time. You just have to control it. I'd be willing to bet that you've been having panic attacks for years, but you're so well disciplined that you didn't let it get the better of you. Which begs the question – why did you let it overcome you today?"

He paused and tried to find a way to explain it, but he was lost. "I don't really know," he admitted. "I think it just built up too much. All the stress was like a poison."

"A poison you had to let out?" she guessed, gesturing around the room.

"Yes, sorry about that," he said.

"I'm not the one who'll have to tidy it all up, and explain why the wall is going to need re-plastered, the door is going to need replaced and why on Earth you need a new filing cabinet," she dismissed his apology.

"Fair point," he allowed. "You could be very nice and do some of the lying for me."

"I won't lie. You trashed the place so that's your problem. But I will help you tidy this lot up," she smiled. She looked around and nudged him cheerfully. "Come on then. What am I? The maid?" she asked as she stood up and pulled the coffee table the right way up.

"I wouldn't dare refer to you as such," he smirked. "It wouldn't be worth what you would do to me," he added, just imagining the things Serena would say in such an argument. He got up and started reordering his books. "Thank you," he said, barely audibly, as he watched Serena pick up the bonsai tree, scooping the soil into her hands and putting it back in the pot.

"You must have been in one hell of a mood," she muttered. She stood up and looked him in the face with a soft smile. "You're welcome, Henrik."

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**Hope this make sense.  
Please feel free to leave a review and tell me what you think!  
Sarah x**


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